International Women’s Day

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate, and I am thankful to be able to make a contribution. I was raised by a wonderfully strong and loving mother, and I married an equally strong wife. I also have two granddaughters, and I am conscious that my mother’s strength of character and my wife’s compassion will make them very successful in their lives to come.

My mother is 87 years of age and 4 foot 10, and she laboured beside my 6-foot father, stride for stride, all their lives. She was determined not by her tiny frame, but by her heart of a lion. No task was ever too much for mum, and I like to think that some of her grit and determination has come through to me and the rest of the family. My parliamentary aide often uses a wee statement that reminds me of a comment by Margaret Thatcher: “If you want something talked about, let a man do it, but if you want something done, give it to a woman.” I am ever mindful of the fact that there are exceptions to that, and I hope that I am one.

Today, I want to mention three people of Ulster extraction who played a big role in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and across the world. The first is Cecil Frances Humphreys, a famous hymn writer. In the 1840s she wrote many compositions that appeared in the Church of Ireland hymnals. She married William Alexander, who became the Bishop of Derry and the Archbishop of Armagh. Many of her hymns are still important to us. “All Things Bright and Beautiful”, “There Is a Green Hill Far Away” and “Once in Royal David’s City”, to mention just three, remain popular across the world.

Isabella Tod was born in Edinburgh, but she spent most of her life in Belfast. She became Ulster’s pre-eminent advocate of votes for women and women’s education. She campaigned for changes in the law that resulted in the Married Women’s Property Act 1882. She secured the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts, and she championed the right of women to higher education. She also persuaded the Queen’s University of Ireland to allow girls to take examinations and be awarded certificates. What a wonderful legacy she has left behind.

Sarah Leech, the daughter of a linen weaver, was born in Raphoe, in County Donegal, into the Ulster Scots tradition. Her staunch Unionism was evidenced by her poems. Sarah’s weaver poetry is genuinely impressive, and I greatly appreciate her impact on Ulster Scots poetry even to this generation and beyond.

I read a tremendous article on family life among the Ulster Scots settlers in America—it is nice to have a lady from the United States with us in the Gallery—that praised the role of women. That is something that my wife would agree with. Among those settlers, men were the warriors and women were the workers.

For generations those men had to be warriors in the old countries of Scotland, England and Ireland, and the pattern did not change just because they migrated to America. In any society where the men go off to war, the women do much more labour at home. That was true for those Ulster Scots, too. In those families, the women laboured in the fields right beside their husbands—the women of Ulster and this United Kingdom remain the same.

I join everyone who has spoken in this debate in celebrating the achievements of women who work hard in their occupation, raise their family, reach the top of their field—as everyone who has spoken in this debate has done—and raise the next generation to stop seeing gender and simply judge on ability.